Ray Van

Ray Van Hooser died in March, 2000. Email from his daughter. [Photo]

Audio (10 min) - Recorded in 1982 on the station's 35th anniversary celebration.

"My radio background began in Royal Oak, Michigan about 1940. From Royal Oak, Michigan I moved to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where I worked as an announcer for KBTN in Jonesboro.

Before KBOA even went on the air I went in as sort of a Program Director and kind of got the programming aligned and at the same time I was doing this Bob Conner, as you know was the Chief Engineer at that time, was getting the technical details together and we put this station on the air with a bang.

We were always trying to figure out who could draw the most mail, me on my Old Camp Meetin' and Butter Ball on his personal appearance show. So we had a contest. In that two or three week period I drew something in excess of twenty-five thousand cards and letters. Butterball lost. So on a given Saturday which was preannounced Butterball pushed me down Main Street in a wheelbarrow. There was an estimated thirty thousand people in town to see that and they came from I think about seven states.

I was at KLCN and then the CP came through for KBOA. And before the station even went on the air, I contacted Mr. Jones and agreed to give me a go at it so I moved up to Kennett. I would go out during the day and write contracts for advertising and then I would go back to temporary offices at night and write the commercial continuity and try to set up some kind of a program schedule. I think I had about seventy or eighty thousand dollars worth of business written before the station ever went on the air."